17 reasons to have an

Attitude of Gratitude

• You’re alive,
• you live in a country where you have enough food to eat,
• you can afford to eat out at least once a month,
• you have (or had) parents that love you,
• you have a strong sense of self,
• you are on a path of awakening,
• you have a great sense of humour (yes you do!),
• you have friends that appreciate you,
• you are not in prison,
• you've been given a good education (more than half the world’s population don’t get this),
• you have eyes to appreciate the beauty of the world,
• you have terrific health (I hope),
• you are the best lover on the planet (maybe!)
• you are free to express your opinion on anything,
• you have a body that works,
• you have thousands of friends on facebook (if not don’t worry!),
• you have a life expectancy (we’re told) well into your nineties.
  

you can afford to eat out at least once a month.

Be grateful for the food we enjoy.

an attitude of gratitude is an inner state . . .

How we hold people in our thoughts is also an indicator of our state of gratitude. Do you often have the thought that certain people are mean, petty, bigoted, difficult? Remember these are your thoughts about them. Yes, some people may be those things I warrant, but they’re still your thoughts about them. And at any given moment the thoughts a person is having reflects the thinker, and not the one they’re directed at.

Just something to keep in mind.

. . . of an outer expression

What about all those greedy bankers who have brought us to the brink of ruin? Surely I don’t have to feel gratitude for them?

No you don’t. It’s always a choice. But just remember the more gratitude you feel, the more you create in the world. And it was greed and ingratitude that created that mess in the first place.

Have you ever heard people say, ‘be grateful for what you have or you might lose it!’ This is not gratitude. This is fear. It is the mentality of lack feverously clinging to a misrepresentation of gratitude. Sometimes praying is similar. A lot of times people only pray when they want something, or when they have a problem. Make living a life of gratitude your prayer. It doesn’t even have to be verbal. Your life is a prayer.

Gratitude and the law of attraction

When we’re feeling life’s unfair we’re not in a state of gratitude. And so we’re less likely to attract wealth and prosperity, for the principle of attraction implies that we be grateful for what we have, before we receive it.

There are many, many ways to experience gratitude. One is to go off somewhere into nature, sit in total silence and begin to appreciate everything around you; the beauty, the colours, the sounds.

There are equally many ways to express gratitude. You can do so verbally. Tell someone you love them and that they’re appreciated. It’s amazing how often we forget to do that. We assume they know.

Gratitude can be expressed financially, of course. Now, while there is nothing wrong with this, money is sometimes a means of not communicating, of not feeling our feelings. Gratitude is never about paying someone off. That's getting even.

Be effortlessly grateful

Real gratitude is feeling appreciation even when we can’t think of anything specific to appreciate. Some people even include illness in this. They know at some higher level that it serves a purpose and that it will pass in its own time.

When we trust, really trust, we know that what we truly desire will come about. And when we are grateful, really grateful, we have the same surety. Make gratitude so much a part of your life that it becomes an automatic response, that it gets encoded in your DNA.

Remember Everything is Perfect.

Don’t just be grateful for what you have, be enthusiastically grateful! Tell one person today that you appreciate them, and mean it.

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